This screen shot shows the Twitter page of Bryce Williams, whose real name is Vester Lee Flanagan II, shortly after he fatally shot WDBJ-TV cameraman Adam Ward and reporter Alison Parker during a live broadcast in Moneta, Va., early Wednesday morning, August 26, 2015. The co-worker gunman later shot himself dead after a police chase.
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The whole incident was caught on live television, while you could hear Parker’s horrifying screams.
Flanagan may have revealed a possible motive for the shootings. He refused to stop and sped away from troopers, but ran off the road and crashed.
He was found with a gunshot wound, and has been transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, they added.
Officials with WDBJ said Flanagan had been fired from the channel in 2011 and later filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint.
WDBJ’s general manager, Jeff Marks, said he wasn’t aware of any prior threat to the station.
UPDATE 10:36 a.m.: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said the suspect has been indentified and “appears to be a disgruntled former employee from the station“, local media reported, according to Reuters.
Minutes after these videos appeared, the Twitter account was inaccessible; a message on the page said the account was suspended. The three do not seem to notice the gunman, who doesn’t start shooting until Ward points the camera at Parker and Gardner.
CNN affiliate WDBJ’s Alison Parker and Adam Ward were conducting an interview when the shootings happened. The cameraman, Adam Ward, had been with WDBJ for several years, starting off in the production department and moving to videographer. When he was hired here, he quickly gathered a reputation as someone who was hard to work with.
The station also confirmed the interviewee, Vicki Gardner of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce, was in surgery on Wednesday afternoon.
The station then switches back to a shocked anchor back at the station, who says: “OK, not sure what happened there”.
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Marks said hours after the morning shooting that police advised employees to stay inside.
